HOMILETICS

Becoming a Transliterate Church

I was in a taxi yesterday stuck in slowly-moving traffic and happened to glance at the car in the adjacent lane. The driver was thumb-twitching like crazy on his iPhone while his vehicle continued to move forward. I know we have laws against intoxicated drivers, but we should have, if we don’t already, have stronger laws for those who drive while “intexticated.”

Intexticated is a neologism considered by the New Oxford American Dictionary as a contender for New Word of the Year. It refers to the practice of texting while driving and the obvious dangers to public safety posed by those who drive while intexticated. 

Other words considered by the NOAD include freemium, referring to a business model in which basic services are offered gratis, and funemployed, a word that describes those—of the 10.2 million who are unemployed—who use their newly unemployed status to goof off and have fun.

The winning word, however, is unfriend, which means “to remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.” Me—I haven’t been unfriended yet, but when it happens, I am sure it’s not going to feel good, and—on the other hand—I have not “unfriended” anyone on a social networking site, and I would like to think that I am not in the habit of unfriending anyone in any phase of my life.

The NOAD contest gives one pause. Is there a neologism that would be particularly appropriate for the church? I invite your responses.

My own suggestion comes from WordSpy: transliteracy. It refers to the “The ability to read and write using multiple media, including traditional print media, electronic devices, and online tools.” This has meaning for me, because a donor who shall go unnamed, recently approached me and plopped a new MacBook on my desk, and said, “Here.”

Being a digital immigrant myself, and a stodgy, uncool PC user, learning to be cool is a stretch for me, and learning to use a MacBook for me is like learning to read Chinese. Try finding the backspace key, or tapping the mousepad on a MacBook like you do on a PC.

The word was coined by Dr. Alan Liu, a professor in the English Department at the University of California (Santa Barbara) whose CV including books, papers, presentations and awards runs longer than Obama’s Health Care Reform package now in the Senate. He says that transliteracy describes “the ability to read, write and interact on a range of platforms.” He’s talking about the kid who can watch Warehouse 13 on television while “simultaneously discuss its plotlines on Facebook, listen to music on MySpace and text a friend to discuss homework.” We could call that multi-tasking (a neologism that appeared in the early 90s) but it’s multi-tasking on a wide “range of platforms.”

The reason this is an important word for the church, is because the church today must be a church that is transliterate. Why? Because increasingly our target demographic—to use a business model—is already hyper-transliterate and expects us to be as well.

The multiplying platforms on which the Good News can be disseminated is both a blessing and a challenge. Some fabulous ministries are underway around the world for no other reason than some disciples of Jesus are transliterate and have found new ways to bring Jesus to those for whom there’s been very little good news these days.

2010 is a year when we might want to take a look at how we can connect transliteracy with pedagogy and evangelism.

We could get excited. 

Le Grand Debat

A couple of days ago, the French government again asked its citizens to discuss what—exactly—it means to be French.

This unease and self-doubt is so typically French—and Woody Allenish. But the question posed now, in what has been dubbed The Great Debate, arises as France struggles to re-imagine itself as a multi-cultural political entity with significant segments of its population deriving not from European ethnic sources, but middle eastern and African as well.

So what does it mean to be French?

It means, for starters, that you recognize the iconic Tour Eiffel; adore the tricolor; understand the meaning of liberte, egalite, fraternite; that you’re willing to cough up 30 Euro for a slice of toast, orange juice, one egg over easy, and an espresso for your petit dejeuner and that you take your breakfast with Fifi, your poodle; that you own at least one Jerry Lewis movie; that you can carry three baguettes under your left arm, while walking your poodle, and eating a pain de chocolat at the same time.

President Nicholas Sarkozy wants the French to articulate what “Frenchness” means, or: How is “Frenchness” demonstrated in the cultural life of France these days, or, How SHOULD we French be more like the French should be like? The head spins.

So what would we say “Americanness” is?

Or--on The First Sunday of Advent—two days away—What, exactly, does it mean to be a Christian?

We enter the season in which we welcome and celebrate the birth of Christ, one has to ask the question, “So what?” What does “Christian-ness” look like? What is utterly distinctive to the expression of our faith that would set a Christian apart from others?

It is that we know the liturgical responses? We believe in God? We can say the Lord’s Prayer? We make sure the church gets a cut of our paycheck? And so on.

Again: How do we answer the question of this great debate: What is Christian-ness?

The gOd Effect

Last week, Oprah Winfrey announced on her daily show that she’d be leaving the daytime format in 2011 in order to concentrate on her OWN cable network—really, OWN, i.e. the Oprah Winfrey Network. It was an emotional moment—she hadn't wept so openly since Obama got the nomination back in August of 07 in Denver.

O is a media phenomenon, and no one does personal branding better than O.

I’d never heard of Winfrey until I saw her in The Color Purple. It wasn’t much later, as I recall, that she made the jump to a daytime talk show, competing with a lot of sleazy sensational stuff, and in the early years, her show wasn’t that much different. But then she left the sensational stuff behind, focused on her target audience, eschewed strongly political content, unlike Phil Donahue, and became a sensation , influencing an entire generation of women along the way.

Once, about 10 years ago, I was teaching a Freshman Composition class at a local university, and Gloria Steinem came to campus, and I made the class attend her lecture. Her rambling talk was, unfortunately, the same old stuff, not even rehashed from the 70s, and weirdly didn’t seem relevant; maybe part of it was that she’d just gotten married (yikes!) — I don’t know. And what’s more, the girls in the class had no idea who Steinem was.

So I asked them about the voice of feminism. Who did they listen to these days? From whence came their guidance as a woman in the 90s? Camille Paglia? Naomi Wolf? Deborah Tanner? Et al?

Oprah.

The Oprah Effect is pretty powerful. It has launched the careers of many, made millions for publishers and authors whose books have been endorsed by the Maven of Media.

Now, her announcement is generating a lot of buzz in the media. One aspect of all this hullabaloo that I find interesting, is what is becoming popular these days among media types: The Long Goodbye.

It’s a phrase that refers not only to a 70s Robert Altman movie, and to the twilight dying experience of Alzheimer’s patients, but to the recent trend of celebrities to announce a career change well in advance.

Jay Leno’s long goodbye lasted five years before Conan O’Brian took over. Producers will announce perhaps up to a year in advance when a long-running television series is going to air its final episode. Some shows die a sputtering death of awkward self-destruction such as The Sopranos.

I’ll get to the point by talking about, not the O Effect, but the gOd Effect, if you will. With the first Sunday of Advent approaching, we have an opportunity to remind ourselves that God—rather than announcing a long goodbye, or even a short one—when God, given our behavior, would surely be justified in doing so—instead announces The Long Hello.

It's the long heilsgeschichte, as we preachers are fond of saying, the incarnation, or coming of a Savior which was heralded centuries before … the light that would shine in darkness would come, a child would be born, a shoot of the branch of Jesse would spring forth, and so on.

As powerful as Oprah has been, and continues to be; as enormous the changes the diva of the divan has wrought; as inspirational as the O of ChicagO has been—nothing compares to the Babe of Bethlehem whose coming, whose “hello” we begin to acknowledge this Sunday.

It’s a trite comparison to be sure: Oprah and Jesus. And surely she would not make such a comparison, as did, for example, the Beatles who famously declared in the 60s that they were bigger even than Jesus.

I’m just saying that right now, the buzz is about Oprah’s long goodbye; but the real story is about God’s long hello.

That’s all.

A Right to Hang

When Carin Froehlich steps outside to hang her laundry on three clotheslines strung between trees outside her 18th-century farmhouse she knows that her neighbors might get upset.

She’s received anonymous notes asking her to not to air her laundry outside cause they don’t like watching her unmentionables flapping around. So now she hang-dries her unmentionables inside.

Froehlich’s motivation is part fiscal and part eco-friendliness. She saves a ton of money by not firing up her electric dryer, and by not running that dryer, she’s not adding to the carbon emissions which is eating away at the one layer of protection our planet has: the ozone layer. Alexander Lee, of the Project Laundry List, a group which is trying to make hanging look sexy, says that dryer use in the U.S. accounts for 6% of residential electrical demand.

Some states have adopted laws which bar local municipalities from adopted anti-unmentionables laws.

It’s all silly, on a number of levels.

Think about it: Aren’t there other matters more important to be discussing: like banning the ownership, sale and manufacture of handguns so that well-educated psychiatrists can't shoot daddy or mommy at the base, and so on? I know, it’s a different discussion, but still … I can’t get too bothered if Mrs. Froehlich wants to hang her panties and bras on a line to get that sun-fresh softness and save a few bucks at the same time.

Hanging laundry used to be a common practice, of course, until the invention of the dryer. No one thought anything about it. Kids would play in the back yard, chasing each other and get caught in sheets or some frilly feminine garb…it was childhood. No one freaked out about it. On any given Monday afternoon, the back yards in SmallTown, America, would be awash in sheets, diapers, pillow cases, pants, trousers and unmentionables. We all knew each other’s business back then.

And the issue is cultural too. Walk around in any city in southeast Asia and look up at the high-rise apartment buildings and you’ll see clotheslines and laundry hanging all over the place, making the building look like that French dude who covered Central Park in pink, or the Eiffel Tower, so something.

The debate could ignite a discussion on theological lines about the meaning and practice of confession. We are invited to expose our laundry, even our dirty laundry to one another, and anyone who says he doesn’t have dirty laundry is a liar.

We are even asked to carry the laundry basket for others as necessary.

Hanging our laundry is often a good thing. It humanizes us. What do people think? That we don’t have laundry, that we don’t have unmentionables that need regular cleaning?

But, on the other hand, I do believe that some of our dirty stuff need only be brought to God. The rest of us don’t need to see it.

It’s like Andre Agassi and his new tell all book. Did tennis really need to have him telling all those stories? Did hanging that laundry really serve any purpose but to enlarge Agassi’s bank account and sell books. Roger Federer and others are pretty upset about it, as they should be.

So hanging’s a good thing, but in the end it comes down to one question: To hang or not to hang?

Praise the Lord and Pass the Popcorn

One of the curiosities of the Revised Common Lectionary is that come November, whether Cycle A, B, or C, we’re going to be reading eschatological texts in the New Testament. Occasionally these readings spill over into Advent as well. We get the gospel gloom and doom texts as well as 1 Thessalonians and some Revelation.

In this, the RCL seems to follow or mimic a cultural trend: This is the time of the year when we can expect to see at least one blockbuster film in the cinema portending the end of the universe as we know it.

Last year, it was War of the Worlds, a take on the H.G. Wells classic, and this year it’s so far it’s been Knowing, and District 9 and now the $200 million 2012 in which director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day [1996] and The Day After Tomorrow [2004]) has California sliding off into the ocean, Rome burning and a lot more.

So if you’d like to preach on Mark 13:1-8 this Sunday, for example, you need only to turn to Hollywood for some contemporary images to bring your message to life.

Pass the popcorn.

Problem is, it seems hard to preach these apocalyptic texts as Thanksgiving approaches, and certainly as we swing into Advent.

But, although we’re not in a real sense facing an apocalyptic scenario as envisioned by 2012, many would argue that the planet Earth is, in fact, in dire straits. And people are worried, not only by ecological concerns, but for safety issues that lie closer to home. Our parishioners are living in a violent country where random violence can claim our loved ones—parents, spouses and children—at any given time and without notice, given how heavily armed is our citizenry—some of whom are so mentally stable, or are unable enormous pressures, that not even a degree in psychology can mitigate.

So are parishioners are worried.

The eschatological texts of the New Testament, far from being messages of hopelessness and despair, are precisely the opposite. They trumpet—in the face of doom—a bright note of triumph and ultimate victory.

And the first peep of a exultant musical score of final victory was heard by the world in a manger of Bethlehem.

Advent is a clarion call, a ringing reminder, that hope has come to this world.

We are not alone.

Just Like Hasan

I have not weighed in on the Ft. Hood carnage in part because it has become a dreary exercise – responding in a pastoral and homiletical way every time a horrific crime of violence is committed. There have been so many.

We live in a violent culture. And quite frankly, I am stunned that we are still willing to permit the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns in America. Stunned.

But this particular atrocity may have happened anyway.

Here’s part of what I’m thinking.

I am astounded and confounded at the enormous human capacity to be unaware or dishonest in the business of self-appraisal and self-discipline.

Here is a man who by all accounts was friendly, well-educated, in a position of trust and authority, a trained scholar of human behavior – yet a man who utterly failed to interpret his own decline into depravity, who miserably refused to acknowledge his degenerating ethical and moral compass, who could not make a self-correction or call for help, and who in consequence thereof arrived at a place where the taking of innocent human life posed no ethical, moral, social problem.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, and who can know it?” [Somewhere in Jeremiah]

“If we say we have no sin, the truth is not in us.” [1 John 1]

How did this journey to self-deception begin? If someone could have stopped him a few minutes before he opened fire and asked him, “Hey Hasan, tell me why killing 13 innocent people is a good thing”—what would he—could he—have said?

But I suspect that if we raise these questions with our congregation, we’ll shake our heads, and pat ourselves on the back because we know that we could never sink to such a level, and we’ll leave church, go home, and then – some of us will physically abuse our spouse, or we’ll walk out on our spouse for someone else, or we’ll emotional abuse our children, or we’ll lie about someone, act unkindly toward someone else, or refuse to offer forgiveness, or we’ll take back a promise, or we’ll say something unkind and unnecessary, or we’ll get drunk and abusive, or we’ll surf the Internet for porn, or we’ll defraud someone of something rightfully theirs—and we will never stop to ask ourselves how we came to believe that what we’re doing is ethically, morally, spiritually, theological, socially permissible. In fact, we won’t even given a tinker’s dime about it. We’ll do what we want to do when we want to do it.

Just like Hasan.

Jesus as Brave Thinker

The sun revolves around the earth.
Animal species never change. …
The government can’t provide health insurance to old folks.
Humans can’t fly to the moon.
Telephones are only for talking and listening.

So begins “Brave Thinkers,” the featured article in the current issue of The Atlantic.

The assumptions listed above now, of course, seem silly. But for a time—in some cases—centuries, even millennia, such was the conventional wisdom.

The conclusion to draw is not that you can’t trust science—science like other disciplines—works with the raw materials at hand.

What science and indeed the world needs, according to this piece in The Atlantic are “brave thinkers” who challenge conventional wisdom and allow us to experience things about which we had only dared to dream.

I found it curious that of the 27 “brave thinkers” (BT) listed by The Atlantic, not one of them did any “brave thinking” in the field of theology or the church per se.  Maybe the editorial staff at The Atlantic are Hitchens disciples who don’t think that religion is very good at chasing the bus, or ballet dancing (to understand this dense allusion, see my Back Page column for the Nov-Dec 2009 issue of Homiletics).

A partial list of BTs includes Thorkil Sonne, Ceo And Founder Of Specialisterne; Morgan Tsvangirai, Prime Minister Of Zimbabwe; Camille Parmesan, Professor, University Of Texas At Austin; Shai Agassi, Founder Of Better Place; Montgomery McFate, Senior Social Scientist At The Human Terrain System; Freeman Dyson, Professor Emeritus, Institute For Advanced Study, Princeton; Iftikhar Chaudhry, Chief Justice Of Pakistan; John Fetterman, Mayor Of Braddock, Pennsylvania; and Craig Watkins, Dallas District Attorney.

Camille Parmesan, for example is working on strategies which will help save endangered species from the effects of climate change. She’s noticed that species are moving north. She wonders if human intervention is relocating species might be worth the effort.

It’s fascinating reading, and also quite encouraging to know that BTs are looking at radical and fresh approaches to solving some of the planet’s most pressing problems.

And here’s why I think this is relevant to what we’re doing in the local church. We have nothing to fear from BTs in our midst, and in fact, a good retreat with our BTs might turn up some surprising options for ministry in our local neighborhoods.

The Atlantic describes the people on its list as “people who are risking careers, reputations, and fortunes to advance ideas that upend an established order.”

Are you a preacher/pastor/teacher who would risk career, reputation and fortune--oh, wait, preachers don’t have fortunes—okay, career and reputation to advance ideas that upend the established order?

Let’s see.

Didn’t this whole Christianity thing get started by a BT? And a group of 12 BTs who were once described as having turned the world upside down?

We’ll Take Better Care of Our Dogs

I am sorry I cannot be more specific about what follows—or lucid.

I’ve been sicker than a dog for three days. I don’t know which end is up, or down, or sideways.

Jeanie was telling me about this National Geographic show in which islanders from some exotic isle in the South Pacific are brought to the U.S.

They arrive in some city and notice homeless people on the streets. They’re shocked. They don’t see that back home on their island.

They visit a middle class home, where, as it happens, the wife is taking Cuddles, the poodle, to the Pet Pamper shop to have its hair done and nails trimmed and so on.

Again, the islanders are shocked. They don’t do that to their dogs back home.

Then, one of them, shaking his head, says: We will go back home and take better care of our dogs; you should take better care of your people.

 

The January-February Issue of Homiletics Is Online!

Yes, it’s almost 2010!

Can you believe it? [Sigh] Y2K such a distant memory. The Internet bubble still expanding. Housing prices still soaring and airlines still solvent.

Anyway, the new issue is online and as always I’m pumped about it. The issue contain a complete ASH WEDNESDAY order of worship for you to adapt for your own use, and it has a retrospective piece about the 100th Anniversary of the Boys Scouts of America.

Here’s a sample from “Did You Mean?”:

Paperview boxing.

No, that isn’t a rage new sport featured in the X Games. It isn’t a derogatory term for the way an editor slashes up flabby writing. It has nothing to do with the classic knock on a soft boxer: “He couldn’t punch his way out of a wet paper bag.”

It’s a search engine typo for “pay-per-view boxing.” In fact, it was one of the top search typos registered by Yahoo! last summer.

Other top gaffes included “Brack Obama” and “swan flu.” ... Honest or ignorant, such typos happen to all of us as we fill search boxes with inquiries. Knowing this, search engines use spell-check software to predict what we were actually looking for in the first place.

Go to Google and type “Homeletics” in the search box, and Google leads your search result with, “Did you mean Homiletics?” It’s funny to then scroll the list of misspelled search results below it. Apparently, there are a lot of blogs, a few professors and even an online bookstore offering thoughts on this accidental art.

Mark Paskin, a senior engineer with Google, notes that two kinds of misspellings occur on the site: simple typos and conceptual errors. The former is a mistake made for a known word, but the latter happens when people don’t know how to spell something in the first place.

“Paperview boxing” is a perfect example. This is when the Google spelling correction function really tries to read our minds.

“U tube” is another common conceptual error. Almost everyone mistyping this phrase is looking for the video site YouTube; they just don’t know how to spell it. But a u-tube is actually a U-shaped glass tube used to determine the density of liquids and gases. If your daughter is doing research for chemistry class, she’d have to go to the third page of Google search results to get u-tube information, as opposed to YouTube information.

Typos are just mistakes. But these “conceptual errors” are the kind we’re looking at in Jeremiah 1. ...

And the material continues.

Take a look.